Studies
by Elektrify
Summary: "Ilse is a train wreck. A beautiful, alluring train wreck." The second in a series of character studies. Modern AU.
1. Chapter 1

Moritz is a morning person. He hates the dark, and is content to wake up about five hours before everyone else in the flat he, Otto, and Melchior share. He is very ticklish. He is a professional violinist with Berlin's Company Orchestra. He likes overcast winter days, but is adverse to any sort of precipitation. He has terrible allergies, and a knack for losing mittens. He's gullible_ ("What's under there?" __**"Under whe-DAMMIT!"**__). _He gets on very well with Anna, and will usually double date with them if Melchior asks nicely. He silently and tolerantly hates all of Melchior's doctor friends. He stress-eats Splenda packets before big events. He votes Democrat.

Moritz is like water- he changes his shape to wherever he is. When Otto's football friends come over to watch the game, he wears a pair of Melchior's old sweats and says, "Bollocks" a few seconds after everyone else when Klose misses the net, peering around to see if his subterfuge is working. Melchior sometimes wonders if Moritz knows that people love him even if he disagrees with them or has a different way of dressing. He loves cows, and gets really excited when he sees one on the side of the road. He's gotten into two accidents by yelling, "LOOK- COWS!" while Melchior was driving.

He's always trying to tame his hair, which seems to be forever on end, and will buy any sort of product that claims to flatten, defrizz, or soften his mop of curly hair. He's spent his rent money on flatirons three separate times, and Melchior usually bails him out. He still shaves twice a day, because stubble tends to make him break out. He's ridiculously tall. He loves being a wingman, especially for Hanschen.

His parents are dead- his mum from cancer when he was nine, and his dad from a heart attack when Moritz was twenty. He has a brother, Karl, in the military, whom he sees once or twice a year. He's sort of nested his friends into a family for himself. Thea always invites him to weddings, because he's fun to dance with. He has never slept and will never sleep naked. He hasn't taken his father's watch off in two years.

He lost his virginity to Ilse when they were seventeen in the back of the Corolla, and there's never been anyone else for him, which is unfortunate, because there are a lot of people for Ilse. He kissed Hanschen after Ernst broke up with him, simply because he didn't have anything else he could say to make him feel better. He was really intense during high school. Coffee is his drug of choice. He listens to NPR in the morning, but hates it after seven thirty. He gets really snappy when people use the word 'depressed' without a medical diagnosis. He hates his conductor like most people hate Hitler.

The scariest moment of Melchior's life was Moritz's suicide attempt in sixth form, because he hadn't realized his best friend was in that dark of a place. It took them six months to talk about, but when they did, it was like a new Moritz crawled out of his shell. He's had one girlfriend- Martha, when they were sixteen, and has spent six years chasing Ilse. Nail tapping annoys him like nothing else- it's his ADD. The only thing he can decently draw is a giraffe, and even that's stretching it. He was the first one to question how much Hanschen drank during sixth form. He can braid hair.

It's just that sometimes Melchior wishes Moritz knew it. He wishes Moritz would get it through his head that they love him.

Moritz is a thousand different Moritzes every day, and Melchior loves each and every one.


	2. Chapter 2

Ilse is kind of a train wreck sometimes. But she's like, a really _alluring_, beautiful train wreck that sort of convinces you to hop on and join the party even though you're speeding down a mountain and the tracks are about to end. She's got six piercings- two in each ear, one in her navel, and one in her collarbone, the latter of which tends to get infected. She's got a cat and a parakeet, though they're only alive because Martha feeds them when Ilse inevitably forgets. She smokes cloves, even though the rest of them outgrew that years ago.

She has the messiest bedroom of anyone Moritz knows. It's covered in clothes and photographs and different mementos from their shared childhood. She keeps something from the outdoors in a vase on the counter of her loft at all times. She's a morning person and a night owl. She's allergic to oranges. She loves word games and psychoanalysis _(_"_Who do you think would win if we were all in the Hunger Games?") _She's ridiculously tall. When asked to describe herself in one word during tenth grade Honors English, she wrote "off" on a slip of paper and walked out of the room for a smoke.

She is the inventor of the Oprah Game, wherein one character is Oprah and gets to ask the other player all the nosy, violating questions they want. One night Moritz asked her when she'd had her first kiss. She was eleven, she said. Her father took her to meet a "friend" of his. Her favorite flower is the sunflower. She would only wear sarongs for the rest of her life if given the option. She pretends that she does yoga, but she really just wears yoga pants and stretches her hamstrings once a week. She's quit smoking twenty-three different times.

She's very sensitive about dropping out of college- Moritz supposes it's a social thing, when one of them starts talking about that incident in junior year and she has to remind them that she was doing a photo shoot for a McCall's catalog that weekend, that she lived off-campus. Once, he gave her a pamphlet for a radio management course at uni with her Christmas present, and she didn't speak to him for a month. She can make friends with nearly anyone anywhere. She hates planning vacations ahead of time.

She kept his sweater the night she took his virginity, the one his Nonny knitted for him that Christmas. She knows he knows it's his, and that's okay. Sometimes it's the only hope he can hold on to that involves an Ilse Stiefel. Her phone background is the face Hanschen made when they forced him to try pad thai for the first time. Her middle name is Julia. She has a devotion to the Bulgarian football league that no one can explain. She idolized Princess Diana as a child. Her favorite color is purple.

The pieces of Ilse are scattered all over. They are everywhere she is.

All Moritz has ever wanted to do is catch a few and keep them.


End file.
